Quote:
Have you ever suffered from a bout of insomnia, and ended up channel hopping into the small hours of the morning as a result? And having done so, have you ever came across a film that you’ve never heard of, yet it exerts a near hypnotic pull over you, digging itself under your skin ensuring that you’ll be thinking about it for days afterwards? If so, then you’ll recognise the kind of film that Seconds is.

The opening credits are stark black and white close-ups of various facial parts, pulled into weird and twisted shapes by the camera focus, while Jerry Goldsmith’s harsh and brooding score booms out over the top. Even from the credits, it is clear that Seconds is going to be a hallucinatory and powerful experience.

We then join Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), a businessman rapidly approaching his pensionable age, and is seemingly extremely uncomfortable because of it. However, this is also due to the fact that an old friend gives him mysterious instructions to get in touch with a company that will change his life. Intrigued, Hamilton agrees, and he finds himself on the receiving end of an incredible offer. For a quite considerable fee, the company will literally give Hamilton a new lease of life. He will undergo surgery and awake a much younger man with a new identity, leaving behind another corpse to take his old place in society, leaving only one question – where do they get the corpses from? Hamilton is unsure, after all who wants to live forever, and what about his family that he can never see again? However, the two men in charge of the company (Will Geer and Jeff Corey) demolish his argument in a most chilling scene, and Hamilton soon finds himself reborn as Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson). Yet, despite waking up in a body most of us probably would pick given the choice, “Wilson” is not a happy man and doesn’t take to his new existence at all.

John Frankenheimer’s career highlight is arguably The Manchurian Candidate, yet Seconds runs it very close, repeating a lot of the themes that the former film explored. It’s a film drenched in paranoia as we are in the dark about the company as much as Wilson is. We never find out who they are, where they operate from, or how the actual surgery works. The few times we see the outside world it seems strangely deserted, and in a ghoulishly ironic twist Hamilton is ferried to the company by visiting a slaughterhouse and hitching a ride in the back of a meat truck. Frankenheimer sets the film in cramped interiors filmed in gritty black and white, whilst sticking the camera into the actors faces for sweaty closeups or actually attaching it to the actors to create a nervous, edgy paranoid sense of constantly being watched. This atmosphere continues right throughout an orgy scene that is disturbing rather than sinfully gleeful, right to a crackerjack ending that sends you out with your head reeling and your stomach tumbling. It’s an ending that ranks alongside Night of the Living Dead from the same period, as one of the bleakest, yet thematically perfect climaxes that American cinema is likely to offer.

If Frankenheimer’s target in The Manchurian Candidate was politics and the media, then here it’s the wealthy classes and their never ending quest for vanity, perfection and the chance to hang on to their wealth for as long as inhumanely possible. Yes, they may be able to wake up in a new youthful body, but at what price? The 1960s was a period of great social change, but the Reborns are stuck in the past, trying to cling onto the dying of the light, and it’s not glorious or noble, but absolutely sickening. They seek to celebrate life, but instead reek of death.

Randolph’s performance is key to that, as a man seemingly terrified of passing away sometime in the next decade, but it’s Hudson who’s the biggest surprise here. A world away from the Sirk melodramas and the Doris Day romantic comedies that he’s most famous for, he gives a stunningly anguished and adult performance. Like us, Hudson is off balance and off kilter throghout as he becomes slowly aware that everyone knows more about his situation than he does, and it terrifies him, such as the tremendous scene where he goes from boorish lush to a complete mental breakdown seemingly in one take. It’s a performance that doesn’t give any easy answers to the situation, and helps give the ending the kick that it has. The whole film has the feel of a noose being slowly tightened around your neck while you lie awake at night.

With it’s edgy, paranoid energy and slippery grasp on reality, the legacy of Seconds can be seen from One Hour Photo to American Psycho, to Brazil and to Hidden. For it’s full effect, Seconds is best enjoyed late at night, with the lights out where it can work its persuasive terrors on you without interruption. The film is an unceasing nightmare that you don’t wake up from.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/9A75017AD53030E/John_Frankenheimer_-_%281966%29_Seconds.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

Plot: This picks right up where KILINK VS. THE FLYING MAN ends with Kilink dead after a fall off a building. But, as a narrator cautiously tells us, this is not the end of Kilink’s story. Sure enough, he is alive a few minutes later and planning his next scheme. This entry has Kilink getting involved in a war between two rival gangs over some microfilms that has pictures of Turkey’s bases and missiles on it. This one plays like a EuroSpy film. and has quite a bit more action than the first two with Kilink getting chased all around Istanbul.
DVDRip, B&W.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/8BC20D4A5793705/Kilink_strip_and_kill.DVDRip.XviD.f66.avi
http://www.nitroflare.com/view/9F5B9111EAE1D7D/Kilink_strip_and_kill.DVDRip.XviD.f66.srt

Language(s):Turkish
Subtitles:English srt.

Quote:
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a daring exploration of science fiction as an art form. The story of an alien on an elaborate rescue mission provides the launching pad for Nicolas Roeg’s visual tour de force, a formally adventurous examination of alienation in contemporary life. Rock legend David Bowie completely embodies the title role, while Candy Clark, Buck Henry, and Rip Torn turn in pitch-perfect supporting performances. The film’s hallucinatory vision was obscured in the American theatrical release, which deleted nearly twenty minutes of crucial scenes and details.

RIP David Bowie (1947-2016).

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/FC29CFCBB4C35DB/Nicolas_Roeg_-_%281976%29_The_Man_Who_Fell_to_Earth.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

Quote:
If you’re at all familiar with underground cinema, than you’ve probably heard tales about this flick for years. But actually seeing the damned thing is a different matter entirely. Crass, sick and hilarious, this no-budget b&w feature is filled with the essence of pure, undiluted cinematic derangement. Like the earliest works of John Waters, it revels in taboo-shattering shocks and an undying love for Hollywood kitsch. Glorious overwritten by George Kuchar, and directed by the late Curt McDowell (who was one of Kuchar’s first students), it’s a torrent of comically-lit cliches, heated to the point of lurid parody. The time: A dark and stormy night. The setting: An old, secluded mansion–the home of the terrifically obscene Mrs. Gert Hammond (Marion Eaton), who staggers about the place with heavy, mismatched eyebrows and a vomit-caked wig.
And as the night progresses, more and more visitors arrive at her doorstep, stranded by the inclement weather. One guy has a fear of ladies’ girdles, another is the Christian wife of a country western singer, a few more were in a car wreck, and George Kuchar himself shows up (and steals the show) while transporting circus animals. The characters then proceed to fight, fuck and spout pages and pages of dialogue, while Marion plays voyeur through secret peepholes–watching the males play with vacuum-powered penis enlargers as she masturbates with a huge cucumber. A smorgasbord of 42nd Street goodies are left out for the guests’ disposal (the predictable array of blow-up dolls, jellies, dildos, et cetera), and they’re certainly tested out thoroughly. Everyone has dark, nasty secrets. Everyone has weaknesses which are eventually exposed. And all the men have hairy asses (which we get in WAY-too-loving close-up). Of course, the best is yet to come, when the viewer is introduced to Marion’s dead hubbie, who she had pickled in jars after he was killed by locusts; and her son, who’s kept locked in the basement with Elephantitis of the balls. Plus, since the filmmakers have every other sexual combo on display, why not toss in a horny gorilla with a taste for young men, and Kuchar’s indescribably demented story of having sex with an ape?!…With a running time of over two hours, the film may sound like a task, but it never slows down and NEVER shuts up, not even for the sex scenes. Never one to waste film stock, Kuchar has the characters rambling incessantly, even in the middle of a blow job. This is a full-blown, near-perfect parody which cobbles together a cast of Irwin Allenesque characters, and then steeps them in hardcore sex and disturbing imagery, until it becomes a twisted, OLD DARK HOUSE-style soap opera. The performers are all appropriately hyperactive, with Kuchar bringing power (and flying spittle) to every word. But the flick’s true joy lies in George’s gift for scriptwriting. The movie’s packed with long, lush monologues, wall-to-wall revelations, plus dialogue so dense (and often drowned out by the score) that it’s impossible to ingest in only one sitting. But is it erotic, you wonder? Not to the unimaginative mainstream viewer, but I certainly found something cruelly, crudely seductive in its fondness for fetish and secret pleasures. Without question, THUNDERCRACK! is one of the great underground sleaze epics, and a touchstone for all independent filmmakers to come!

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/0C08F30F90B9A77/Curt_McDowell_-_%281975%29_Thundercrack%21.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Ever imagined what life would be like if humans were apes in modern life? That is the portrayal in this deeply thought provoking mind boggle.

http://www.nitroflare.com/view/FE8959D98267BBE/Aaaaaaaah.2015.720p.BluRay.x264-TRiPS.mkv

Language(s):Aaaaaaaah!
Subtitles:None

In a story that hops around a little, a priest arrives in a village to go from person to person offering his own form of consolation or advice. On his list of “clients” is a former Communist Party official who is now wheelchair-bound because of a sniper’s bullet during the 1956 uprising; a woman dying of tuberculosis; an astronomer who sings with a punk rock group; a woman who leaves her soldier-husband to work in a nightclub; and their son. As these people suffer through personal travails, a surprise is in store for everyone — the priest is not exactly who he seems to be.

http://nitroflare.com/view/F923837EA8521A7/The_Dog%27s_Night_Song.mkv

Language(s):Hungarian, German
Subtitles:English, German

Quote:
Glory is often met with opposition, and whether victorious or defeated, we always hold fate responsible. Don Quixote de La Mancha came along sixteen years after the defeat of the Invincible Fleet and has erred the Earth ever since. Today he will join a meeting between old friends in the garden of eternity, in which the glories of the past and the uncertainty of the future will be thoroughly discussed.

http://nitroflare.com/view/746E8E05002F679/O.Velho.do.Restelo.2014.720p.HDTV.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English

Quote:
Even if adapted from Dickens’ Hard Times, the writer’s world fits perfectly in the Portuguese reality of these times. In a hamlet, that functions as a social microcosms, great wealth & extreme poverty mingle, so do culture, ignorance, perversion & ignorance. Griffith’s channelled via Júlia Britton.

Quote:
Biography

Following graduation from the Escola de Cinema at Portugal’s Conservatorio Nacional in 1976, João Botelho is best known for his internationally acclaimed adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel Hard Times, Tempos Dificeis (1987). Botelho became interested in film while studying engineering. He abandoned engineering studies to attend film school, and shortly after graduation found occasional work as a graphic artist and film critic, as well as founding a short-lived film magazine. Botelho made his directorial debut with the documentary Um Projecto de Educação/A Project for Popular Education, which he co-helmed with Jorge Alves da Silva. He directed his first solo effort, Conversa Acabada/The Conversation Is Over, in 1981. For Tempos Dificeis, Botelho received prizes from the 1987 Venice Film Festival. In 1994, Botelho was commissioned to make a film about Portugal’s most famous city, Lisbon, to celebrate its designation as a European capital of culture. The film was part of a trilogy, each one depicting part of a typical day in Lisbon. Botelho’s film Tres Palmieras covered the hours of six a.m. to two p.m. and was comprised of a series of interesting short vignettes. Botelho did not make another film until Trafico (1998). ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Quote:
Demonstrating the universal appeal of Dickens’ classic stories this Portuguese adaptation of Hard Times is bold, visionary and a world away from the traditional British costume drama.

It might not be the most obvious decision to transfer Dickens’ 1854 novel to mid-1980s Portugal, and then shoot it in moody black-and-white but this is that exactly what Portuguese director João Botelho decided to do, with fascinating results. Located in a Portugal still getting back on its feet after a fifty-year totalitarian regime, Botelho’s film can be read as an allegory of the growing pains of a country moving into large-scale manufacturing at any time during the 20th century.

http://nitroflare.com/view/BA02A7675F37596/Tempos.Dificeis.1988.WEBRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:None

Synopsis
The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

Film review

In a film conceived as a companion piece to his acclaimed “Nostalgia for the Light,” veteran Chilean documentarian Patricio Guzmán shifts his attention from his native land’s deserts to the seas that line its spectacularly long coast. For most of its 80-minute length, “The Pearl Button” meditates lyrically on water and its effects on humankind. Then it makes a sharp turn into evoking the horrors of the Pinochet regime, a transition that feels awkward and rather forced, diluting the film’s ultimate impact.

At its outset, Guzmán gives his film a cosmic frame that might remind some viewers of Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life.” Watching giant telescopes that observe the universe from a Chilean desert, the filmmaker, who narrates throughout, notes that water originated in the stars and came to Earth almost as a gift. Now covering most of the planet’s surface, the element is indispensable to human life and perhaps nowhere more visibly important than in Chile, with its 2,600-mile coastline.

Though bearing some of the soothing grandeur of a standard nature documentary, the early sections of “The Pearl Button,” as they descend from the heavens to the seas, are gorgeously filmed and ably support Guzman’s poetic words.

The film also evidences some pleasing visual wit. In discussing Chile’s unusual geography, Guzmán shows students unrolling a large papier-mâché map of the country on a studio floor. Though its width isn’t great, length-wise it goes on and on and on. Guzmán makes the point that it’s hard to conceive of Chile as a whole, due to its unusual shape, which is why people often think of it in three parts: north, center and south.

Despite its bounteous connection to the Pacific Ocean, though, Chile has never been known as a great seafaring nation. Its European settlers looked inward, toward the land, rather than to its watery western horizon. In doing so, they both ignored and brutally effaced the traditions of their indigenous predecessors, who cultivated a multi-faceted relationship with the water, especially in the southern Patagonia region.

Guzmán’s account of Chile’s native people reestablishes the link between the stars and water. He uses old footage and photos that show men, women and children—who belonged to tribes that would make long sea voyages between islands—wearing only speckles of white paint that look for all the world like star maps.

Hauntingly beautiful, these images lead into a discussion of how the European colonizers subjugated the native peoples, which was horrific indeed: “Indian-hunting” was a remunerative sport, in which different amounts were paid for various body parts. The invaders made every effort to rid the natives of their culture, including their connection to the sea.

This is exemplified in a tale about an indigenous teen, which gives the film its title. A British sea captain bought the boy for a pearl button, then took him to England and introduced him to European dress and ways. After returning to Chile, Jemmy Button, as he became known, rid himself of his foreign clothes and haircut, but was never, according to Guzmán, able to regain his original identity.

When the filmmaker takes up the subject of modern Chile’s great political horror, the connection to the sea may strike viewers as rather contrived, but there is one. Following the US-backed 1973 military coup that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende, thousands of the new rightist regime’s opponent’s “disappeared,” i.e., were abducted, tortured and killed in various ways, some of which Guzmán gruesomely details. In recent years, it has become known that many were flown out to sea and dumped, alive or dead, into the ocean.

It’s grisly stuff, but the real problem is that it seems to belong in another movie. Discussing these events, Guzmán’s voice retains its elegiac tone while also growing subtly hectoring, making points that would be better shared in a more fitting context. No doubt many Chileans remain understandably obsessed with the terrible crimes of the Pinochet regime, but that doesn’t mean they have be rehashed at every possible cinematic opportunity. In this case, the subject seems to undercut—rather than augment—Guzmán’s thoughtful exploration of Chile’s connection to the sea.

http://nitroflare.com/view/E654CD9058899C9/EL_BOTON_DE_NACAR_2015_BLURAY_PATRICIO_GUZMAN.mkv

Language(s):Spanish
Subtitles:English (muxed)

Quote:
“A caça” is one Oliveira’s most distressing and mysterious films. Two boys, Roberto and José, enter a hunting ground, flooded with marshes. José falls into a quagmire and Roberto runs to the village looking for help. The locals form a human chain to save the victim…

“I conceived ‘A caça’ after reading in a newspaper that a boy was sucked down into a pit of quicksand and the other, due to fear, fled without helping him. The movie is based on this event.” In this laconic way, Oliveira summarizes his purpose. His first intention was to make a feature film about such an anguishing event.

But “A caça” transcends this anecdote. From the Brechtian opening shot accompanying the main titles, Oliveira suggests a multiple initiation voyage: from the city to the countryside, from civilization to virgin nature, from juvenile laughs to the old man’s terrible cry (“A mão, a mão”: “¡The hand! ¡The hand!”) that expresses the ancient fear about losing contact with the tangible world. In “A caça”, the rough landscape is indifferent to human drama. It allows people to come into its territory but in order to set them a trap; like a great carnivorous plant that devours animals and people, which are unsuspiciously close to each other. (“If animals were good, they would not kill each other”, the boys discuss in their way to the marshes.)

It is striking that this rough fiction has been qualified as a documentary. Oliveira’s visual language is realistic and brutal (as Franju used in it Le sang des bêtes, visually mentioned by the Portuguese director). But his gaze seeks to penetrate into the secret world hiding behind the visible world, one of the trademarks of Oliveira’s cinema.

“Oliveira’s Buñueliana, violent facet finds in A caça his more explicit materialization (…) And, certainly, it is the strongest artistic crystallization of the “Desespero português” of the 60s” (Jorge Leitão Ramos: Dicionário do Cinema Português 1962-1988. Lisboa: Caminho: 69. Found in: link)
“Oliveira’s devastating short is a menacing study of violence and frustrated masculinity that chronicles the strange accident that befalls an all-male hunting party. ‘The Hunt’ was among Oliveira´s first works to be universally praised for the strength of its vision and storytelling power”. (Harvard Film Archive)

Last remark: In his original version, the movie ends tragically. So the censor forced Oliveira to shot a more optimistic end.

http://nitroflare.com/view/D947AD29F5BD590/A.Caca.1964.720p.HDTV.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English

Synopsis
Assis 2005: a troubadour walks the streets of St. Francis of Assisi hometown, singing and playing the Song of Brother Sun or Song of the Creatures, written by St. Francis back in the winter of 1224. Woods of Umbria, 1212: during one preaching to the birds, St. Francis suddenly faints. Reanimated by St. Clare, the saint looks strange and absent and he doesn’t remember anything. When the night falls, the animals in the forest sing and praise Francis. But this love sung by the animals leads to a feeling of possession, a desire of exclusivity usually known as jealousy.

Quote:
Miguel Gomes, Lisbon, 1972. Studied Cinema. Film critic between 1996 and 2000. He directed several short films. THE FACE YOU DESERVE (2004) is his first feature. OUR BELOVED MONTH OF AUGUST (2008) and TABU (2012) have confirmed his success and international projection. TABU has been released in about 50 countries, and won dozens of awards.
Retrospectives from Miguel’s work have been programmed at the Viennale, the BAFICI, Torino Film Festival, in Germany and the USA.
ARABIAN NIGHTS, a three-part feature film, premieres in 2015 edition of the Directors Fortnight in Cannes.

http://nitroflare.com/view/9F4C9C87A9A111A/Cantico.das.Criaturas.2006.720p.HDTV.x264-MaZ.mkv

https://filejoker.net/ealp9x8phws3/Cantico.das.Criaturas.2006.720p.HDTV.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, Spanish

Quote:
This Portuguese drama examines the daily life minutiae and intrigues of two scions of society in the rural village where they live. One is a wealthy landowner, the other a widowed aristocrat who lives in a world of her own. “Starting off from a fine novel by Carlos de Oliveira, Fernando Lopes doesn’t so mush reconstitute a story, but rather defines an atmosphere parallel to that which exists in the literary work. The erosion of time, the crumbling of an epoch, the decline of a stately home, the disintegration of emotions: the film version of A Bee in the Rain talks about all these things, using a language that is sparse and unpolished, fascinating and at the same time repulsive in its disturbing silence” (Lauro Antonio).

Biography
Portuguese filmmaker Fernando Lopes began his career as a newsreel editor’s trainee for the recently established Radio Televisão Portuguesa (RTP) in 1957. Prior to that, he had studied bookkeeping in Lisbon. In 1959, Lopes attended the London School of Film Technique on a grant from the Fundo de Cinema Nacional. He returned to RTP in 1961 and for the next two years was actively involved in their news services. After years of relative obscurity, Lopes made his first theatrically released feature, the docudrama Belarmino (1964), and for his efforts earned a Fulbright scholarship that allowed him to spend three months Hollywood in 1965. It was not until 1968 that Lopes would begin shooting his next feature, Uma Abelha na Chuva/A Bee in the Rain. The film was finally edited and released in 1971. In addition to making feature films, Lopes remained active with RTP as a manager of Channel Two and with its Department of International Co-Productions; in 1970, Lopes served for the Centro Portuguêse de Cinema. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

http://nitroflare.com/view/17A366E2EE5FB31/Uma.Abelha.na.Chuva.1972.APH.DVDRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

https://filejoker.net/a3hzngvngetw/Uma.Abelha.na.Chuva.1972.APH.DVDRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:Portuguese, English, French

Quote:
If the scorpion could see and the viper could hear, there would be no escape”. The viper is deaf and the scorpion can’t see, so it is and so shall be, the same way the countryside is peaceful and the city bustling and the human being impossible to satisfy. Lacrau demands the return “to the curve where man got lost” in a journey from the city towards nature. The escape from chaos and emotional void we call progress; matter without spirit, without will. The search for the most ancient sensations and relationships of mankind. The amazement, the fear of the unknown, the loss of basic comforts, loneliness, the meeting with the other, the other animal, the other vegetable. A dive looking for a connection with the world. Where beginning and end are the same, but I am not. (João Vladimiro)

http://nitroflare.com/view/2E75BEAE2DA274A/Lacrau.2013.720p.WEB-DL.x264-MaZ.mkv

https://filejoker.net/y5a2qeh8581h/Lacrau.2013.720p.WEB-DL.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English (Hardcoded)

Synopsis:

This is a highly experimental French film consisting of no more than 23 camera shots, total. It resembles nothing so much as one of Warhol’s earlier films, except that it is more episodic. Nico of the Velvet Underground portrays a different woman in each of the episodes. The first three concern her “rescues” from Death Valley, Egypt and Iceland by a young man to whom she eventually says “stay away from me.” Following that, she recites from various texts in German, French and English, makes various gnomic observations and encounters various men in various guises. All the men are played either by director Philippe Garrel or Pierre Clementi.

~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Quote:
Among the very few new talents in the New York Film Festival, the young Frenchman Phillipe Garrel is on several counts the newest. An avant-garde filmmaker who began directing movies while still in his teens, he was only 22 in 1970, when he made “Inner Scar,” which played last night in Alice Tully Hall.

“Inner Scar” features Pierre Clementi (nude) and the Andy Warhol superstar Nico (dressed in a loose robe) and a few others, including Phillippe Garrel. Clementi speaks French; Nico sometimes complains in English and sometimes declaims in German verse, and sometimes sings for musical background on the soundtrack. There are no subtitles.

The people, never more than two at a time, move through a variety of landscapes from glacial to nearly tropical—but that are always, in some manner, desert. The people may walk or run or ride a horse, or drive a flock of sheep or even sail a little boat—but almost always they are in movement. At some level I suspect there is a story in which Clementi, carrying bow and arrows and wielding a sword, comes as king or savior or avenging angel to Nico in the wilderness, and then disappears without satisfying her complaint. But the story is very obscure.

Much of the time the landscape seems reduced—even self-consciously reduced—to the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. It conveys the feeling of a space unreal in the way, say, that the landscape of the Krazy Kat comic strip was unreal. And as if it were in a comic strip or cartoon, the landscape supports images and gestures of great stylishness and wit.

“Inner Scar” is sometimes very funny, and it is a humor—usually concerning the indignities suffered by an unhappy Nico spurned — that grows out of, and depends upon, the incongruity of human finiteness seen against the vast perspectives of the film’s natural world.

In such stark, unyielding simplicity there is surely a good deal of pretension. But I think there is also some achievement, and irony, and an implicit appreciation of the ridiculousness of sticking a couple of people out in the middle of nowhere (in fact, several strange locations, including Iceland) to perform symbolic drama.

Compared with the desert journeys of Alexandro Jodorowsky—”Fando and Lis,” “El Topo” — “Inner Scar” seems downright civilized. Not a movie you can exactly warm up to, and no startling breakthrough in screen art either—but a very interesting and restrained experiment in visual rhetoric, in minimal gesture, in setting some highly abstract patterns of human behavior in the midst of a curiously agreeable wilderness.

— (ROGER GREENSPUN) The New York Times

Rosenbaum on Garrel:

As with some of the films of Akerman, Eustache, and Pialat, what Garrel offers is basically a restaging of a few slices of his own life–served up fairly raw, with nerves still quivering. Garrel started out as an unabashed experimental filmmaker in the mid-60s, making films in 35-millimeter as well as 16, many of them with New Wave actors (Bernadette Lafont, Zouzou, Jean Seberg, Pierre Clementi), his own actor father (Maurice Garrel), and himself. By the late 70s Garrel had gotten close enough to conventional narrative to make it into art theaters, but prior to that he was sometimes just filming portions of his life rather than restaging them. According to Thomas Lescure, who authored with Garrel the only book about Garrel to date–the 1992 Une camera a la place du coeur (A Camera in Place of a Heart)–the filmmaker divides his work into four periods: adolescence (1964-1968, eight films); the Nico years, or underground period (during which Garrel was involved with the singer Nico, who appeared in almost all of his work, 1968-1978, seven films); the “narrative” epoch (1979-1984, four films); and the current period, when he started making more use of dialogue (1988 to the present, at least five films).

http://nitroflare.com/view/5316574E3038311/La_cicatrice_interieure_%281972%29_–_Philippe_Garrel.mkv

https://filejoker.net/bnm8il5mnvxx/La cicatrice interieure (1972) — Philippe Garrel.mkv

Language(s):French, German, English
Subtitles: None (The director has forbidden subtitles in this film, says IMDb)

Quote:
Aged 13, Maria Noronha is an estremely pale and fragil girl, sick with tubercolosis. In order to alleviate her suffering, she gathers poppies from her garden, and at night puts them on the pillows on her bed. But the poppies have a devastating effect. Her deep sleep is disturbed by terrible ghosts and hallucinations: about the decadence of the Portuguese XVII century, the Jesuits’s power and the terrible Inquisition.

Quote:
Biography
João Botelho was born in 1949 in Lamego (Portugal). He has directed and written the screenplays of numerous films. He was one of the protagonists of the Renaissance of Portuguese filmmaking at the end of the Salazar dictatorship. After his early work as a television director and his first short film ALEXANDRE AND ROSA, he made his debut feature-length film THE OTHER ONE. This was followed by A PORTUGUESE FAREWELL and HARD TIMES, TRAFFIC and WHO ARE YOU?. In 2008 he authored NORTHERN COAST, followed by FILM OF DIQUIET, OH, LISBON, MY HOME and THE MAIAS – STORY OF A PORTUGUESE FAMILY.

http://nitroflare.com/view/58BEB79DE69E522/Quem.es.Tu.2001.PH.DVDRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

https://filejoker.net/tsbo1uot8qre/Quem.es.Tu.2001.PH.DVDRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French, Italian Includes Director’s Commentary track (no subtitles available)

Imdb
User Review

Fat, Dumb and Rich
23 May 2007 | by mar9 (Newcastle, Australia)

The three nouns above were the episode titles for this 3-part documentary about the USA. “Fat” is naturally about food, and it’s no surprise to find that the portions from the perspective of an austere Englishman are mind-bogglingly huge. As are the people who eat them. “Dumb” is basically a road trip through the some of the stranger sights the US has to offer, and the stranger people who populate them. “Rich” is an exploration of the US lifestyle for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and the answer is that it’s pretty fine. Jonathan Ross is the perfect presenter for this show that proves that it is impossible to exaggerate the weirdness that is life in America. He gives his subjects free rein to be as mad as they obviously are, and participates wholeheartedly. Part 1 in particular is a good companion piece to “Supersize Me” and the other episodes are somewhat reminiscent of Michael Moore when he’s not being irritating and invading office foyers and boardrooms. Find “Americana”, watch it. It’s good.

“Fat” is naturally about food, and it’s no surprise to find that the portions from the perspective of an austere Englishman are mind-bogglingly huge. As are the people who eat them. Jonathan Ross tackles a four-pound meal, cooks on an engine and in a dishwasher, and visits a cafe. This episode examines the history of fast food and visit the McDonald’s Museum/ First Restaurant as well the KFC and Colonel Saunders.

“Dumb” is basically a road trip through the some of the stranger sights the US has to offer, and the stranger people who populate them. Ross plays shuffleboardand miniature golf at a nudist colony; we see an Ohioan’s Cinerama projection system built in to his home; an Arkansas firing range; a famous diving pig.

“Rich” is an exploration of the US lifestyle for those fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and the answer is that it’s pretty fine. Ross goes to Wall Street; the Exotic Dancers Hall of Fame; a drive-through Funeral parlour;a corporate mascot training camp.

http://nitroflare.com/view/FF31B8B4E73CE7F/Americana_1_FAT_.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/933613EA2DF397E/Americana_2_DUMB_.avi
http://nitroflare.com/view/8532A5539F7583A/Americana_3_RICH_.avi

https://filejoker.net/cyiw9zwy4p00/Americana_1_FAT_.avi
https://filejoker.net/ztfhcuk929do/Americana_2_DUMB_.avi
https://filejoker.net/6qimkkibmhvz/Americana_3_RICH_.avi

no pass

Quote:
Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira made this amazing film in 1981, at the age of 72; as powerful as it is stark, it suggests a blending of the modernist, minimalist techniques of Jean-Marie Straub with the elusive spiritual subject matter of Max Ophuls. In 19th-century Portugal, a rising young novelist falls in love with the daughter of an English army officer, provoking the obscure envy of an aristocratic friend, who resolves to marry the girl himself and make her suffer for her betrayal. The baroque plot is presented in a series of single-take tableaux, which do not attempt to embody the drama as much as allude to it, leaving the dense and passionate feelings to take shape entirely in the spectator’s mind. Oliveira limits himself to showing only what can truly be shown: not the story but a representation of the story, not the emotions but their material manifestations as they have crossed the decades. A masterpiece of the modern cinema, difficult but extremely rewarding.

Review by Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader:

http://nitroflare.com/view/57937CF56D3218F/Francisca.1981.TVRip.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, Spanish

Quote:
The Year is 1980 and it’s Summer in Vienna

Most people outside of Austria will rarely get a chance to see this movie, but if you get a chance like this, don’t let it pass as you as you’re on for a real treat. ‘Exit’ is not just an Austrian cult movie, it’s a funny and at the same time disturbing and at times depressing look into Vienna in the 80’s. This is “the” movie parents in 1980’s Austria did not want their kids to see.

Viennese crook and would-be playboy Kirchhoff dreams of owning his own coffee house and having lots of beautiful women. In order to reach his goal, he is sometimes compelled to leave the straight and narrow.

Comedy, violence, sex and vandalism are the ingredients of this Austrian cult classic.

IMDB User Review:

Perhaps the most dynamic Viennese picture of the decade, 8 January 2007
9/10
Author: ruediger_vienna from Vienna, Austria

A guy having sex with a woman on a rooftop – just to get her coffee-machine. The opening sequence of Exit – “Don’t Panic” tells it all: Hanno Pöschl (his best movie appearance ever) stars as a young outskirt mug; stealing cars he just has one dream: his own coffee house. But tumbling through the Viennese underground, he is keeping himself busy with trouble…

This is quite the movie parents in 1980’s Austria did not want their kids to see. Violence, some nudity and very explicit language – which make the movie more than fairly entertaining.

Add a very young Paulus Manker and you get -9 points out of ten.

http://nitroflare.com/view/8419A53218CEC4D/Exit_-_Nur_Keine_Panik_%281980%29.avi

Language(s):German
Subtitles:None

“Hitler’s Folly” explores what might have happened if Adolf Hitler’s art career had been more successful and instead of becoming an evil dictator, he was inspired to become an animator like Walt Disney.

http://nitroflare.com/view/FDB08472F0EE705/Hitler%27s_Folly.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

Quote:
The story takes place in the old streets of Porto and by the banks of the Douro River. A gang of very young kids has just accepted a new member, Carlitos, a shy boy who has “played it tough” by stealing a doll in a shop. Carlitos soon develops a crush on Terezinha,the only girl of the group. The trouble is that Eduardo, the “boss”, is also in love with the pretty little girl. And he will not allow any rival to challenge him…

Quote:
Given the historical context of its production, Aniki-Bóbó can clearly be read in political or sociological terms as a somewhat contradictory exploration of repression and freedom. transgression and punishment. Oliveira has said that his film, shot during the war and the dictatorship, has a pacifist spirit, even though that was not a direct intention. It spoke against oppression. I included a policeman only because of the film’s symbolic aspect. It was an attack on the dictatorship. Police control took the place of an education that should come. from civic practice. which did not exist during Salazar’s Estado Novo” (Baecque and Parsi 137). A political or sociological interpretation finds resonance in the location shooting along the banks of the Douro River and the use of nonprofessional actors, which have led numerous critics to see the film as a pre- cursor of neorealism. At the same time. its exploration of desire. guilt, and fear lends itself to a psychoanalytical reading, which is bolstered aesthetically by the film’s oneiric, frankly expressionist sequences.

from “Manoel de Oliveira” By Randal Johnson

http://nitroflare.com/view/21EBB9FC58014DF/Aniki.Bobo.1942.720p.HDTV.x264-MaZ.mkv

Language(s):Portuguese
Subtitles:English, French